The Choirs of the Greater London Fortunae Academy
by Leo of Nohr
Summary: Fortunae Academy in Greater London has two international standard choirs: their chamber choir and their acapella choir. Both groups have...members of interesting character. Or: throw almost every member of the cast of Fates into two choirs. Recent chapter: Leo and Takumi finally get their act together.
1. Chapter 1

"Everyone in! Come on now, come on, we have to go." Prying the children away from the pushy or protective parents was probably the hardest part of any trip, Reina thought, watching the ever slightly terrifying presence of Garon Nohr trying to seem loving to little Elise.

"Bye Daddy!" She hugged him and even Elise, who was quite possibly the most cheerful child in the whole school, pulled away quickly from her father.

Reina counted children onto the coach. She needed forty two, but the possibility that someone was late and/or getting up to inappropriate practises was fairly high. Actually, she'd changed her mind. Getting through the trip while making sure none of her students were complained about for inappropriate conduct amongst each other (or, in some rather unfortunate cases with Laslow, members of the judging panel) was the hardest part of the trip.

By the time everyone in the line was on the bus, she had forty and all the adults were here. Well, that was a start. "Who isn't here?" She called into the bus.

"Me!" Chorused at least five smart arse kids before the whole bus burst out into tittering.

"Um, M-Miss Ārī." Reina smiled at Sakura and nodded at her to continue. The girl had her hand up despite being right at the front of the coach. "Hinoka s-said she would, um, she's helping Setsuna with her bag."

"Thank you, Sakura," she said, checking out of the window to see Hinoka struggling towards the coach with Setsuna trailing behind, not helping her friend at all.

"I see it's two of yours," Gunter said, watching the two girls as well. "I hope your choir doesn't hold us back." His words were tinged with humour, probably already predicting her response.

"You can say that when your lot put their hormones to the side," she said, with the sweetest and hopefully most sarcastic smile she could manage. Just next to her, she could see Sakura pretending not to hear and pretending like she wasn't finding it funny and also very strange to hear teachers talk about their students this way.

Gunter was about to reply when Reina was saved by the arrival of the two girls, now sans an overly heavy bag. "I'm sorry I'm late, Miss Ārī!" Hinoka said, and Setsuna echoed with a slightly less meaningful apology. "I was just helping Setsuna with her bag."

"It's okay, we were just getting ready to leave so you're still on time. No register has been taken."

"Thank you," the girl said, dragging her friend towards the middle of the bus to sit with the rest of her group.

From there, Reina stood up and did a quick headcount, ignoring how someone's head had disappeared behind a jacket and just counting them anyway. Then she took a register of her choir (without event, other than the usual too quiet voice of Sakura and Setsuna not responding) and watched with a smug satisfaction on her face for Gunter to see as the chamber choir dissolved into laughter when Felicia responded with a 'yes, miss'. Poor girl, that one would stick around for the next few hours, which was all that was needed to make the journey more irritating than normal.

Then the bus started to pull away from the school, slowly as always, and a huge cheer was let up from the students. She didn't understand why they felt the need to cheer, all these trips gave them was less time to do their homework in their now significantly shorter holiday. They'd do better cheering at the end of the journey when they could get out of the coach that probably held at least forty people they hated by the end of the journey. Such was the joy of traveling with teenagers. Almost all of them were awful, loud and obnoxious.

It took no less than two minutes for someone (Elise) to start singing 'We All Live In A Yellow Submarine', and while everyone groaned, by the time it had gone round for the third time it had a nice five part harmony going for it.

Two hours into the journey, Reina had planned a stop off at a small shopping centre which she had checked in advance had a large enough number of toilets to accommodate them so they could get going again within quarter of an hour.

"Alright, everyone off!" She called. "No bags, we won't be in there long and Mr Mekanikku is staying on the coach so no one will steal anything." Things were more likely to get stolen if they were taken in anyway, and on top of that she wouldn't be able to stop any of the children buying sweets. And that was just what they needed with four hours to go, of course.

Supervising the bags during the toilet stop off was one of the greatest privileges of the journey and one that Yukimura, Gunter and Reina frequently flipped a coin over to decide who got to do it. This was because the bags couldn't be a pain. However, the students definitely could be.

Reina had heard three people scream so far and she damn hoped that they were all her students just having a water fight in the bathroom or something, because if they were members of the public she might have to draft a formal apology again. She also very much hoped that Niles and Corrin would come out of the bathrooms soon, because they'd gone in first and half the students were now drifting their way back to the coach in the sort of tired way that students who'd gotten up too early walked when they'd been in one place too long. She didn't want to have to send Gunter in to tell them to hurry up for fear of discovering what they could manage to do in a public toilet.

Why oh why did she choose to teach the arts when she could have just been a Maths teacher? What had she done to curse herself with a group of teenagers who couldn't keep their hands to themselves? Questions like these ran through her mind during the ten minutes she spent standing outside the toilets counting students in and out. Thankfully, Corrin and Niles decided to grow up for once and emerged looking only slightly more ruffled than they had before (traveling in a coach covered for those kinds of actions, she supposed) and they even restrained themselves to hand holding while they meandered back to the coach.

Reina sighed in relief as everyone was counted on correctly. No one had gone missing yet. That was a good sign.

Four hours in was when they stopped just outside a park to go and eat the lunches that the children had been told to bring. However, as predicted, and as it happened every time they had one of these trips, some of them had been 'too busy' to pack the lunches, which meant they'd forgotten, their parents had left them with no food in the house (that would have been Beruka, she imagined), or they knew that they'd be allowed to go with a teacher to the nearest shop to buy some crisps and sandwiches. Yukimura had pulled this duty today, and Reina waved him off with a smile as Beruka, Odin (burdened by a great famine) and Scarlet trailed after him to find some lunch.

Of course, staying in the park with thirty nine teenagers between three adults was also not the most forgiving job that Reina had done. She had, for once, dared to hope that she would be able to eat in peace, but that was not the case. For the first part, a handful of the girls had decided to come and sit with her and talk about various things that were obviously picked so she could have a conversation with them too (she appreciated the effort, but watching Laslow was incredibly challenging without distractions), and for the second part she was trying to keep up with a conversation that she couldn't tell was a serious argument or just friendly bickering between the friends not friends, Takumi and Leo (it took a few minutes for her to catch up and realise they were talking about books that had endings they hated).

Thankfully, her students were forgiving and comparatively calm for once. It wasn't uncommon for her to have to yell at them while she was supervising a lunch break, but they were quite tame today. There was very little squabbling between groups, Laslow pretty much kept his hands to himself and there was even minimal kissing (she did have to stop the revoltingly sweet action of Kamui trying to feed Azura some strawberries, but only because she was worried it would devolve into something a little too intimate for the middle of a public park).

Yukimura even informed her that none of the students he'd had to buy lunch with had been a trouble, which was a huge relief, as Odin in particular was known for creating quite a spectacle when the moment seized him. In fact, Reina dared to think, maybe this trip wouldn't be so stressful after all.

Half an hour later she had changed her mind. This was because she had forgotten possibly the most important piece of equipment for this trip: earplugs. While Shura sat to her left with an uneasy feeling of peace, she had to deal with the blend of whatever was playing towards the back of the bus (Gunter said that it was called screamo and Reina told him that no one in her choir had bad taste like Peri's) and the almost equally awful kpop coming from where Subaki and Hinata were sitting.

It was a truly painful hour and a half full of cursing and terrible music that just didn't stop. Within that time she was sure she heard Niles' name being shouted a good thirty times and Laslow was mentioned at least twice as frequently. She also had to break up three separate fights between various students and over half the coach received a warning of some kind.

That was business as usual for the Greater London Fortunae Academy choirs, though, and while Reina would much rather have it in many other ways, she did enjoy these trips when she wasn't stuck in a coach with all these teenagers.


	2. Chapter 2

"Okay, everyone into pairs for your hotel rooms." Leo looked over at Takumi and Takumi was looking back at him. They took two careful steps away from each other, even though they both knew how this would turn out. Everyone had their agreed partners already, but it paid to be reluctant.

After a few minutes, Leo and Takumi let out a drawn out sigh in unison and pretended to grudgingly agree to share a room 'just this once, don't you dare get any ideas and try to talk to me'. Leo went as far as to call Takumi a pineapple head, not realising that the insult obviously held no malicious intent if he smiled while he said it.

Once the rooms had been agreed and the key cards distributed, so began the great journey up the four floors to where the rooms were. They practically had the floor to themselves, though they'd been told that despite this, they had to be respectful of those who were in the remaining rooms. The younger choir members sprinted up the stairs, dismayed to find that they could not beat the lift to the top when they were carrying their heavy bags. The older and obviously more mature members took the lift and found great delight in shoving each other against the walls when the person supervising them wasn't looking.

At the floor they were staying on, there was a great rush of who could get to their rooms first and lie down on a bed. Everyone was tired from the journey to the hotel and no one wanted anything more than to take their shoes off and do nothing for at least ten minutes before running down the corridor to knock on every door.

At the entrance to his shared room with Takumi, Leo shot a final 'save me' look at Camilla, who gave him a knowing look and a wink in return. Some half sister she was. He then got the delight of teasing Takumi, who, after a good four years of these trips, could still not use a key card to open a door correctly. "Hopeless," he tutted, grinning as Takumi shot him a glare.

"Prick," came the ever intelligent response, and Leo only laughed in retaliation as he opened the door to the room and they went inside.

"Bagsie the bed against the wall!" He said as soon as the door closed, dropping his bag and sprinting towards the bed that was placed so he'd be able to lean his back against the wall while he slept. He jumped on top of it, spreading his arms and legs so there was no way at all that Takumi could think it was his space.

"Frick off," Takumi said, and Leo heard him take his shoes off before he made his way to the bed opposite where he was lying. "You KNOW I move around in my sleep; this way falling off is twice as likely."

"Balls," Leo said, but he knew Takumi was right. Damn it, now he had to find a way to give the bed to Takumi without him feeling bad. "Have it if it means that much to you." This wouldn't work, but it was worth a shot for a start.

"Nah, it doesn't matter." Takumi started idly playing with the fraying material at the base of his rucksack strap. That meant it did matter, and now Leo felt bad. Damn it, it didn't even matter that much to him. It was a comfort thing, not a fall off the bed and get possible brain damage thing.

"Come on, pineapple head," he tried an encouraging smile in Takumi's direction. If he refused, Leo could break out the other bad nicknames. "There's no sense in hurting yourself because I sprinted here first. If you ended up with bruises, people might think we'd been fighting."

Takumi nodded, looking slightly uneasy as he replied, "can't have them thinking I'm a battered wife now, can we?" Leo tried to ignore the connotations of that one, instead standing up to make room for Takumi on the bed.

"It's all yours," he said, moving back over to the door to take his shoes off and get his bag to where it belonged: the window bed. Besides, if he wasn't facing Takumi, the boy wouldn't be able to see his blush.

Mr Mekanikku knocked on the door about half an hour later just to check that everything was okay after the reign of terror (this time the knocking was Kaden, Leo thought, because he'd heard the boy laughing). Leo opened the door warily, very aware that this could be Keaton running around for his turn at being the most annoying.

"Everything alright in here, boys?" He asked, looking around the small room. Leo could see the surprise on his face when he noted how tidy it was. Takumi said that he was pretty much known for not being a very tidy person, but Leo was the opposite and he quite probably tidied any mess Takumi managed to make.

"Yes, Mr Mekanikku," he said. "Are we needed for anything?"

The teacher shook his head. "Just making sure that everyone is in their rooms settling in. We're going to get food a little later and we'll be meeting outside the lifts in forty minutes, but I don't expect you'll be late."

"Okay, thank you for letting us know," he said, nodding as Mr Mekanikku closed the door behind him when he left. It wasn't that he disliked the teacher, but there was something distinctly worrying about being expected to answer the door no matter what if a teacher knocked. It was almost an invasion of privacy.

"Did you know he keeps mechanical puppets in his office?" Takumi asked. "They have glass eyes and they sit on the shelf facing the door."

"So when you talk to him, it's six people judging you instead of one," Leo laughed. "I know, it's terrifying." He'd had the man as a music teacher when he was thirteen and he didn't think he'd ever recovered from the one time he'd forgotten his homework.

"He got them out in a practice once," Takumi said, shuddering at the memory. "I had nightmares for weeks." He suddenly looked away. Leo didn't understand why he was so ashamed of the tiny thing that kept coming up in conversation after conversation. Half the things in the world had given Takumi nightmares.

"They're definitely scary," he agreed, resisting the traitorous thought that came to mind about comforting him or even offering to comfort him after a nightmare if he needed it. That wasn't a cool friend thing to say, it was just weird. So instead he just smiled and hoped he wasn't blushing again.


	3. Chapter 3

Kamui glanced across the classroom to where Corrin was sitting (separated again as always even though she didn't look like him anymore). There was a boy there. It was the same boy as always, the one who was there with her brother all the time, the one that Corrin really didn't want to talk about. She tried not to look like she was staring as she sized him up. He looked like he was a little taller than Corrin and he was definitely broader, which was worrying. She hoped Corrin wasn't being bullied by him. His skin was fairly dark and his hair was- wait, was he wearing an eye patch?

Kamui forced herself to stop staring as the teacher came into the room. She'd ask Corrin about the boy later, again. She hadn't been able to see what they'd been talking about, and the boy's back had been to her for most of the conversation, shielding Corrin from view, so she couldn't tell how Corrin was responding to the conversation, either. She was worried because she kept seeing Corrin walking away from him every single time she got into the area where they were talking.

She sighed and just tried to concentrate on the lesson. Maths was easy and she could do it with very little effort, but if she kept thinking about this she would never get anything done. The boy who was intimidating her brother would have to wait for the punch in the face (maybe she'd make it a punch in his working eye for good measure).

"Hey, Azura, do you know who that boy with the eye patch is?" She asked her best friend that break time, looking across the playground to see Corrin with the boy yet again, this time accompanied by one of the Nohr boys (Leon? She never remembered all their names correctly).

Azura followed her glance and laughed in response. "Who, Niles?" She started laughing even harder. "Let me guess. He kissed you?"

Kamui spluttered and felt her face start to heat up. Why was Corrin spending time with a boy who did that kind of thing? He wasn't like that. In fact, she was pretty sure that Corrin was just as gay as she was. And that was something that really didn't bear thinking about when she was near Azura. Corrin would never be disrespectful to a girl or a boy in that way and he definitely wouldn't condone one of his friends doing it either. "No, no!" She shot another worried glance at Corrin. "He's been talking to Corrin a lot but every time I go up to him while he's there, he just disappears!"

"He stands next to Corrin in choir practice," Azura said, giggling. "He's new, a bass. He asked to be put there so people stopped accusing him of touching their butts, but I think he was actually doing it." That worried her even more. Was Niles forcing his presence on Corrin? Was he being rude? He sounded like a thoroughly crude person. That did it. She was going to find out why he was talking to her brother today and she'd kick him in the balls if it was anything sinister.

"Corrin!" She ran up behind her brother, who had walked off without her and gone with this new pervert friend of his. "Who's your new friend?" She knew exactly who he was, and he definitely wasn't the kind of person Corrin would make friends with. She'd asked a handful of people who this Niles person was and what he was like. They all gave the same frankly disturbing answer, that he was sexual, that he didn't talk to people nicely, and one person said he was a legitimate sadist.

Corrin jumped as she put a hand on his shoulder. "Oh, hi Kamui! I didn't know you were there." Lies. She'd been standing exactly where she stood at the end of every other day to walk home with Corrin, he'd just chosen not to look over at her, knowing she'd be there and that if he saw her he'd really have no excuse. "This is Niles," he said, indicating the boy who, on closer inspection, was just muscular enough in his upper body that he could be easily intimidating without looking like a thug.

"Oh, Corrin, is this your sister?" His voice made her skin crawl and when he smiled she wanted to punch him in the tooth in the front that was already chipped. Hopefully it had hurt when that happened. He was a lecherous creep and he didn't deserve to be anywhere near Corrin. "It's nice to know there are two of you."

Corrin laughed, and Kamui looked at him in disbelief. She couldn't believe that Corrin would laugh at something like that. "Stop, Niles, you're giving her a bad first impression."

"Damn right he is," she said. "I don't know what you want, but stop creeping on my brother. And me." She was ready to punch him if he refused.

"Kamui!" Corrin sounded…upset. He probably hadn't known what he was getting into. She'd always told him that not everyone was as nice and polite as he was. "Niles is my- my friend!"

And now she didn't know what to do. She'd expected that after she confronted Niles, Corrin would be glad. She'd hoped that he'd tell that creep to leave him alone and then they'd go home together and then they'd email Mr Ford and ask him to move Corrin away from Niles during the choir practises. That was her plan, in the short term. She hadn't even considered that Corrin didn't find Niles as creepy as he actually was.

She huffed and walked away, shooting Niles a glare that she hoped properly communicated her feelings of loathing.

"Kamui?" It was Corrin's voice, accompanied by a knock on the door. "Can I come in?"

She sighed. Corrin probably wanted her to apologise for insulting his new best friend or something. She wasn't going to. She'd offer to punch him, though, if Corrin had changed his mind. What if after she'd left, Niles had been rude? What if he'd gone too far and it was just because she'd left? The thought made her blood boil. "You can."

Corrin came in and it looked like he had been crying. The urge to punch Niles in his smug little face filled her again. "Kamui I think I need to tell you something," he said, and he bit his lip.

"You can tell me anything," she said. She knew they'd just had an argument of sorts, but they were still meant to be close. They'd been close forever.

"I think I like Niles," he said. "As in, like like. I like him and not just as a friend like I said, he's really…" He trailed off and just shrugged.

Kamui wasn't sure if she should feel angry or upset or sorry or anything. It was harder to know what to do now than it had been earlier. Now it was so much more complicated because she hated Niles. She hated him, and he was clearly terrible for Corrin, but Corrin liked him. She couldn't just tell him he wasn't allowed to be with him. She couldn't. That would be wrong, even if Niles was a piece of shit. "Do you think he likes you?" She asked.

Corrin nodded. "He's been flirting with me but honestly Kamui he's really nice, please give him a chance." It was like he was asking her for permission, and she really wanted to tell him what other people had told her about Niles, but she couldn't.

"I'll give him a chance," she said, and Corrin's face lit up. "But if he steps out of line for even a second, I'll chip the rest of his teeth."


	4. Chapter 4

"Up, up!" The little girl, barely five years old at most, only Sakura's age surely, lifted her arms up towards him. Where was her mother? There wasn't a mother or a father or any relative around to look after her.

"Hang on," Ryoma said, holding a single hand out for her to play with like Sakura liked to do sometimes as he scanned the crowd for someone who was looking for a child. There were parents everywhere, but no one seemed to be looking for a girl as young as this one. They were all looking for kids who should be coming out of an evening band performance. His mother was nowhere to be seen, but she was probably managing the others and talking to the conductor and everything. She liked to do that without him.

"Up!" She said, more insistent this time, pulling on his thumb with an unreasonably large force.

"Hey, stop that!" Sakura was not this strong, nor was she this demanding. "What's your name? Is your mummy here?"

The little girl shook her head. "I'm Elise," she said, in the proud tone that only very young children could manage. "I'm waiting for my big brother." Well, her big brother was very irresponsible, letting her wait out here where she could run into the road very easily. Elise then demanded to be picked up again, and this time he sighed but obliged.

"You tell me if you see your brother, okay?" He said, trying to hold her up high, but she was just as heavy as Sakura and both of them were getting harder to lift as they got older. "What's his name?"

Suddenly, Elise started moving around in his arms, trying to get away, and Ryoma tried to put her down as gently as he could, following her gaze to the entrance to see a very worried looking Xander. Ryoma almost laughed. Of course it was Xander, head screwed on so tightly he'd cut off the blood flow to his sense of humour, who'd lost his little sister whilst he was playing in a concert.

"Elise!" It was hilarious, he looked genuinely worried instead of horrendously smug for once. And he'd thought that Xander only had one emotion: entitlement. "Elise!" He was followed outside by two younger kids, and boy was he going to tell Xander just how stupid he was to bring a bunch of kids to a concert seemingly without an adult.

"Xander!" Elise ran towards him and Xander looked up, visibly relieved to see her running towards him. His eyes then met with Ryoma's, and he looked away instantly.

"Elise, you can't do that!" He said, ducking down so he was more on her level. "We said you had to behave when you came here and listen to Camilla."

"Excuse me," he said quietly. "Are you Elise's brother?"

"Who do I look like, Ryoma?" Xander took his usual and entirely expected tone of superiority. Like he knew everything, except he didn't know how to keep his little sister safe.

"Someone who almost left his sister to run into the road and didn't bring an adult to the concert to supervise them?" Ryoma suggested with a grin he hoped looked obnoxious.

Xander scowled in response. "My sister isn't stupid," he said, and his glare seemed to suggest that he thought Ryoma was. The sentiment was mutual, honestly. Xander may be intelligent and very good at the oversized violin, but he wasn't half stupid. It was silly even to leave Takumi alone without supervision, let alone Sakura (though maybe it was MORE stupid to leave Takumi alone).

"She's very pleasant," he said, though he didn't voice that she was almost as self centred as Xander was. It wasn't fair to judge a little girl on the same level as someone like Xander, though, who was much older than Elise and claimed to be responsible. "It was nice to meet her, and your other siblings. You played well today." He smiled again, hoping to excuse himself from the very unpleasant conversation. Xander was aggravating, but Ryoma didn't want to make him into an enemy.

He didn't see the way Xander smiled, because it happened after he turned his back. "Thank you," was all he heard, and hearing it sound genuine was strange, because whenever Xander received compliments he accepted them as if they were expected. He also didn't see when Xander bent down to hug Elise tightly, and he didn't hear him saying to never run off again because it had scared him and he didn't ever want to lose her.

However, the next time he saw Xander, at the first practise for the junior band after the Christmas holidays, Xander was…nice to him. They had never really spoken much in rehearsals because they were in different sections (also, Ryoma sort of worried that if he riled Xander up too much he'd be stabbed by the double bass spike), but in the after school practise that day, Xander approached him.

"Hey Ryoma, are you going to audition for a choir at the end of term?" He asked, and for once his tone sounded more relaxed and the way he spoke wasn't the painfully formal Xander he had grown to intensely dislike. "Your mum's a singing teacher, right, so I thought…" He smiled, and Ryoma almost got the impression he was nervous, but that was impossible for Xander.

"Why?" He asked. He knew that Xander's father was a singing teacher because the boy had mentioned it about sixty times in passing. He also knew who Xander's father was, and he knew the man wasn't very nice. He felt like he'd try and discourage him from joining a choir or something, or say he wasn't good enough at singing.

"I wanted to ask if you were joining one and which one you were planning to join," Xander said, definitely looking nervous now, "because I don't want to compete against you as I know your singing is very good."

Ryoma considered the possibility, just for a moment, that he was hallucinating. Xander would never say something like that. He'd never be nice and he'd never compliment him. That was just…giving other people credit and making other people feel happy was one of the traits that Xander did not add into his conversations. "I'm planning on auditioning for the acapella choir," he said. Immediately, Xander nodded and smiled again.

"That's good," he said. "I think my father would kill me if I didn't join the chamber choir." He laughed, and Ryoma felt like he should too.

"I hope he doesn't," he said, with a very small smile. Maybe Xander wasn't the worst person around and maybe he just had to get to know him. He hoped that, anyway, because Ryoma hated arrogant pricks like him when they weren't being decent like this.


	5. Chapter 5

When Niles was six, he remembered standing in a room with lots of people when they told his mother and father that they weren't allowed to take care of him anymore. He remembered that he'd cried a lot because he missed them very much and he wanted to see them again and he didn't like all these new adults who wanted him to be nice to them.

When Niles was eight, he realised that his parents had tried to go very far away without him and they'd never intended to come back. They'd never thought that they would be caught and punished for their crimes. He cried a lot, but then he was angry. He decided to never talk to his parents ever again and he promised himself that he would never ever never be bad like them.

When he was nine, the present from his parents arrived a month late and it was a large complicated toy that immediately got broken by someone who felt like they deserved everything and they were jealous so they snapped all the bits apart and he (accidentally not really accidentally) snapped one of their arms in half. He laughed at their pain and was sort of secretly glad that his present had been broken because now he didn't have to play with something his parents gave him.

When Niles turned ten years old, his mother called him on the phone two days late to sing him happy birthday and he screamed her and told her he hated her. For Christmas, she sent him an apology card and some money. He ripped the card up and burned it on the big fire they had at Christmas (and he pushed someone who had laughed at his hair so she burned her hand) but he kept the money.

When Niles was eleven, his father showed up when he was walking home from school. He tried to make conversation about how he was doing, if he liked the school that he was paying for, did he ever grow out of his sickness. Niles wanted to scream and punch him and also cry but he was way, way too scared that his father would take him out of the school that honestly he really quite liked even if he didn't have any friends. He got home and found himself silenced by the fear that his father would punish him for reporting him for illegally meeting up with him.

He cried in his bedroom for a long time because his eye(s) hurt and he was so afraid and he sort of liked what he had at the moment even though he was lonely and confused about himself and he hated having new foster parents every handful of months. But he didn't want that to be taken away just because his parents had money and they wanted to see him.

He wanted someone to talk to.

Later that year he joined the choir and discovered what attraction was and he was accused of being gay by his classmates because he liked singing. The joke was on them because something like that was going on but he was confused and he had no one to ask for help with all of that. So maybe he was gay and maybe he'd kissed Laslow once in a toilet after school because he wanted to know what was happening. But it didn't go any further than that. He definitely wasn't gay and Laslow, pretty tall and twelve years old to his eleven, definitely was not attractive in every way. Nope.

(Laslow had the nicest, richest voice Niles had ever heard and he had soft lips and a pretty face and he was unendingly nice to everyone even though he was shy when he wasn't flirting)

The day Niles turned twelve, his parents showed up after school and offered to take him to the cinema to see a film, his birthday treat. He looked around anxiously and just about managed to refuse. He hoped that Azura hadn't minded that he'd walked half a mile next to her until his parents finally stopped following him in their car. Afterwards, they sent him money and clothes to 'apologise for not being able to be with him'. It would have been nice if they were with him on the days following when they'd abandoned him, but they'd done the latter.

He performed in a concert at the end of the year and his mother and father were there in the hall even though he never even told them he was in the choir and that scared him. That scared him a lot because they knew where he was and what he did. And maybe he asked Camilla if she walked in the same direction as him so he could get most of the way home uninterrupted by his parents, but that didn't mean anything. He definitely wasn't scared of them (he was scared, but it worked and he barely had to talk to his parents after choir practises if he walked with her and Xander).

Just before Niles turned thirteen, he started walking home with Corrin every day. Corrin lived further away from school than he did (at the moment) and they took the same route home, so for weeks he saw nothing of his parents except a few texts that went unanswered as he didn't want to confirm that they had his mobile number. He was tempted to text back with a 'who are you, you have a wrong number' but it was too late for them to believe that now. Each text just went into a list of things he could bring up as evidence against them once he could go to school where he liked without their money (preferably after he had a place to live and a stable job, too).

And then, one day, it stopped being like that.

"Hey, Niles, there are some people to our right," Corrin said, moving his hand to pull it away from Niles'. Corrin had said he wasn't particularly bothered about what people thought about their relationship, but sometimes he got a bit worried in public.

Niles made a note in his mind to always walk on the other side. It was so annoying when there were things he couldn't see, but he normally opted for being blind to the side that wasn't the road when they were walking on a pavement. That was what he was always told he should do ever since he was very small, because it was safer or something. He looked over at the people who were probably trying to get past, ready to apologise (unless they looked like they were rude), and then he stopped. "You're not meant to be here," he said, and he reached for Corrin's hand again.

"But Niles, sweetie, we haven't seen you for months," his mother said, smiling at him. "Surely you understand that we're worried about you."

"Next time you have a kid, worry about them before you abandon them," he snapped, and he felt Corrin squeeze his hand. Niles couldn't stand to take his eyes off his parents to look over at him, but he hoped that Corrin would be texting his sister for backup. He did stuff like that sometimes, it was sweet.

His father threw his hands up, looking distressed and slightly angry. Niles flinched away. He couldn't attack them in broad daylight, could he? They would never be allowed near him ever again (they already weren't and it hadn't stopped them paying for his school and stalking him at every turn). "I told you, Niles, we've changed. We're not like that anymore, we're trying our hardest for you, I promise."

"You don't have to be like this," his mother said, and it looked like she was nearly crying. Good. He would never love her and he would never want her to feel anything but upset. "You don't have to act out, either, we love you no matter what and we'll give you attention no matter who you are." She was looking at Corrin and Niles wanted to snarl at her in the way that scared the social workers and then gouge one of her eyes out and see how she liked it.

"You don't have to follow me around," he said. Maybe if he could just pretend he was sort of worried about them instead they'd leave him alone. "If you keep following me, the people in court will find out and then you might get arrested again, and then I might lose my place at school. Please?" He forced himself to smile at them, and it worked. His mother sighed.

"I love you, Niles," she said, and though she was probably angling for a hug from him she just patted him on the shoulder. His father did nothing.

And then they were gone, and Niles almost slumped on Corrin's side in relief. "They're sort of scary," Corrin said, and Niles could only nod. They were terrifying, but one day he'd be able to get rid of them for good.


	6. Chapter 6

"Hey Kamui, do you want to come round today?" Azura asked. It was break time and Kamui may or may not have been sulking as she watched Niles tease her little brother. Her skin still crawled slightly at the way he looked at Corrin, but her brother said he was happy and she wasn't going to interrupt that for the world.

"Yeah, sure!" She smiled at her best friend who would hopefully maybe one day be her girlfriend. She hoped. "Did you want to do more song writing again?" She loved it when Azura wrote and tested songs with her because her voice was so beautiful and she was just so god damned talented it made Kamui want to cry.

"Definitely," Azura said, smiling back. Kamui felt like her heart was about to burst. She needed to stop with this crush thing. It would come back to bite her eventually and she never, ever wanted to come on the wrong end of Azura's cold indifference. Azura meant the world to her, and if she ever lost her...she didn't know what she would do.

After that, they lapsed into their usual comfortable silence, where Kamui alternated between hoping that Azura couldn't tell that she was madly in love with her and hoping that Niles was blind enough that he couldn't see her glaring at him. Just in case. If he ever did hurt Corrin, she was watching.

"I'm not sure about this line," Azura said, pointing to a section of the final verse. "It feels like too much of a dark turn." They were sitting next to each other on Azura's sofa, positioned as they usually were with drinks and snacks. Azura's parents were out, again. Kamui didn't think she'd ever seen either of them in the same place at the same time and she definitely hadn't seen them outside of concerts. They didn't even pick Azura up after their trips, she just got a taxi home most of the time. Azura said she didn't mind and it had always been that way, but Kamui knew that she would never be happy if her mother wasn't at home most of the time. With her father, she didn't care because she didn't remember him, but having constantly absent parents must be awful. It did, however, mean that she could go to Azura's whenever she wanted and they could practise choir stuff all they liked.

"It could definitely work," she said, looking over the line again. "Maybe change the word 'savage' to something more mysterious? When that word is used it feels like you're talking about cannibals."

Azura laughed. It was a beautiful tinkling sound and she loved it deeply. "I sort of imagined that it was about dragons," she said, and Kamui almost let out a loving sigh. Azura was so creative and...dragons. She never would have thought of it, but now she'd been told, it was almost obvious.

"How about 'ancient'?" She suggested. She wasn't quite the poet that Azura was, but she had a basic grasp on the kind of prose that her lyrics turned out to be. Azura could honestly just read them out as poems and they'd be just as impressive as lyrics.

"Within my ancient heart dwells..." Azura read it out, seemingly thinking about the new word choice. "Yes, yes, it definitely works." She smiled and Kamui just fell in love all over again.

"Always glad to be of service," she said, reaching for another handful of crisps. "Sing it to me again?"

"Again?" She laughed, but relented when she caught sight of Kamui's face. Hopefully because she was putting on a hopeful expression. She loved hearing Azura sing and she could honestly listen to her all day. She may have saved every single clip of singing Azura ever sent her to her phone, but that was irrelevant and she would never admit it to anyone. "Fine, I'll sing it with the new words." She cleared her throat and started to sing.

Here was when Kamui usually stopped breathing or pretending that she wasn't in love with Azura. She couldn't just sit by and not be there with a loving look on her face while Azura sang, because everything was just so perfect. Her voice was so smooth and soft and every note she sang was perfectly pitched and her breath control was amazing and every moment that passed without her singing was timed just right so it dragged on just long enough to add feeling and meaning and everything and Kamui just loved it. And her, mostly her.

"How was it?" Azura asked when she was done, and she had that hopeful look on her face like she didn't know she was perfect. Maybe she didn't.

"I love you," Kamui said, and then blushed and realised what she said and ugh. "I mean, ah, I love it. It was great, it sounded really good, um. Um." Azura was smiling and blushing and oh lord above she had really, really fucked up now hadn't she. She'd done everything all wrong and this was it. Azura was going to be too embarrassed to ever speak to her again.

"Do you mean it?" Her voice was quiet and this was her chance. She could confess everything or she could shrug it off and hope that Azura dismissed it for a slip of the tongue in the heat of the moment. Surely it was a compliment that someone would forget how to speak properly after you sang?

"Yes, yeah, of course!" She smiled. "Your voice is great, it makes the song sound really good!" She tried not to laugh awkwardly and then burst into tears. She could do this. Azura would be okay with her now she'd denied everything.

"Can I kiss you, Kamui?" Azura asked, and Kamui very nearly choked on nothing.

"I, ah, um, sure!" She laughed awkwardly this time. "Um, do you want to? Because you don't have to pity me, it's okay."

Azura shook her head. "I think you're beautiful, Kamui, in every way, and I really, really like you in a way I've never felt before. Please, I'd love to kiss you."

And they kissed. And everything was perfect and Kamui could not stop smiling for hours. Azura liked her back. Azura. Beautiful, wonderful, talented Azura loved her back and cared for her and wanted to kiss her and it was wonderful it was amazing.

Kamui giggled as she pulled away from their first and very slightly clumsy kiss. "I think the ocean's grey waves are a bit more like the ocean's gay waves," she said, and Azura sang it that way for her through a fit of laughter. It was the best thing Kamui had ever heard in her life.


	7. Chapter 7

Every term, the two choirs held a party of sorts for all the members who wanted to come. Straight from conception, the two directors had abstained from all responsibility for the event, and for good reason. It normally ended up as more than a little loud and it was very rare that anyone came out with a decent night of sleep by the time everything was over.

It was, of course, as sleepover, but a sleepover of twenty odd girls and then twenty or so boys was bound to be a disaster from the very beginning. The first task was finding somewhere to hold it (and someone whose parents were willing to possibly have their living room destroyed by one activity or another), of course, which ruled out anyone who didn't have a large place to live, like Niles or Kamui and Corrin or even Charlotte. It also ruled out the Nohr family home due to the Hoshido family being the definition of unwelcome there. Hosting it at the Hoshido family manor also had its problems, but if the guests in question were sly enough it could be done.

Beyond that, there were problems like entertainment (you cannot, no matter what you may believe, play card games for six hours) and feeding people and having enough beds and enough space to lie down and also parents owning earplugs was a problem.

This term, the boy's sleepover was being held in the Hoshido household, because Garon was out for a week on a European tour with an orchestra he directed, so it was safe for Xander and Leo to do as they wished when it came to where they slept. The girl's sleepover was being held at Azura's house, because her parents were gone for 'at least a week', according to Azura, and she could easily get rid of the maid for a couple of days. The two events were to be held on the same night (something about not bringing guests and making the party even larger, one year they'd ended up with thirty choir members at one house), which was a Friday night just so everyone was completely recovered by the time it came to school on the Monday.

Kamui had offered to help Azura set up all the stuff for the party and also to bring a couple of things they could possibly do because Azura was at a complete loss, but she found that when she arrived, almost everything was already done. Impeccably clean, lights out the front so everyone knew it was the right place, there were even cushions set up on the floor of the largest sitting room in the house so they could all gather around and sit in the same place (and sleep, if they got round to that one).

"Azura, it's already done!" She waved to her mum, who was pulled up at the edge of the curb, looking slightly anxious. Kamui smiled to her encouragingly. It wasn't like she didn't attend these every term, and she'd been to Azura's house plenty of times. "I thought we'd have loads of stuff to do, and now I'm really early!"

Azura laughed. "I need your help with the TV, I've never used the DVD player," she said, closing the door and then giving Kamui her usual greeting of a kiss. "You never know, it could take two hours."

"No it won't," Kamui said, putting her bag down on the floor and taking one of Azura's hands in hers. "Tell me you haven't done the snacks too, right?"

Azura nodded, pulling Kamui through to the kitchen. "I did some crisps in that bowl and whatever those twiglet things are in that bowl, and there are chocolates in that tub over there, and I got Sera to make some cakes with me, so there's enough for two each of those." Kamui's mind was cast back to the previous summer term when Setsuna had hosted the sleepover and they'd survived off the food they brought with them to share and the pizzas Hinoka had managed to order for them.

"You know everyone will still bring stuff, right?" She asked, helping Azura put all the food on the big coffee table in the sitting room before they went to get some cups and glasses for everyone.

"Yes, of course!" She said. "But I want to give people some stuff too, because I don't have any great games like Flora thought up last winter and I don't know any movies or shows we could watch on TV."

"I think Camilla said she was going to bring Mamma Mia again," Kamui told her, and Azura laughed again. It was so nice when she was happy, Kamui thought idly, but she didn't voice the thoughts.

"Maybe we'll get more than halfway through learning the dance routines," she said, even though they both knew that it was more a joke than anything else. Every single term, Camilla would try and teach them all the dances and the songs in the musical, and every single term they got about halfway through and then everyone was too tired to carry on.

It took them about half an hour how to work out the DVD player, and another half an hour to route out every musical that Azura's parents had collected up over time (a surprisingly large number). They now had a pile of ten to watch, and they'd all have to choose when everyone arrived. From there, they killed an hour checking that everything was okay and that they knew how to tell people where the bathrooms were and that everything was clean.

Finally, at five, people started arriving. Elise and Camilla were there first, very slightly early because they'd walked, armed with Mamma Mia and a large tube of crisps each. This was Elise's first sleepover with the choir, but it felt like she was a huge part of the choir already (even though Kamui herself wasn't very fond of coach based sing songs, she did love Elise). After that, Hinoka and Sakura arrived with a few DVDs of their own and Hinoka had brought a big cake and Sakura had brought...a salad. Well, Kamui wasn't going to judge, but she didn't think it was getting eaten any time soon.

Then people arrived in a steady stream. Felicia and Flora with some food that they'd made together for this, Setusna with nothing as usual, and so on. No arrival came with a surprise, and it all seemed as usual.

"Azura, your house is so nice!" Elise said, peering down from the top of the stairs. "Everything is so tidy, are you sure your parents don't mind everyone being here?"

"My parents barely even know this is happening," Azura said with a smile. Kamui knew that if her parents did know, they probably wouldn't mind anyway. It came with the territory of an absent parent. They didn't mind as long as she was having fun and didn't get arrested for it.

After a few quick tours around the house so everyone knew where all the bathrooms were and which rooms were strictly off limits, everyone settled down in the sitting room to start the evening off. It had now become a form of tradition that they would set all the snacks out on the table, get a whole load of drinks and then start by watching Mamma Mia. This time, though, Elise knew all the dances too, and while it was not unheard of that you could refuse to do something for Camilla, there was no way that anyone could tell Elise no. She was just too sweet to everyone.

As predicted, though, they didn't finish every dance, and by three quarters into the film, everyone was on the floor, laughing and already half asleep. They hadn't even ordered dinner yet, that came after Mamma Mia. As soon as the film was over, Hinoka was off the floor and next to the table with a notepad and pen. Kamui didn't want to ask the older girl where she'd gotten those from, because the likelihood that she'd say 'Camilla's bra' was fairly high. "Come on!" She called. "Pizza orders are needed! It's three to a pizza." Kamui ordered hers with Azura and Selena, because apparently they had similar enough tastes that they all wanted the same kind of stuff.

One confused pizza delivery girl later (Elise gave her a £10 tip and Sakura's salad for her efforts), they were gathered around the table with seven pizza boxes. Now it was time to choose the films and the order they'd play them in. Kamui didn't know when everyone had decided that there was no point in bringing anything that wasn't a musical, but it had happened and now it was a standing tradition that they only watched musicals.

They ruled out a few musicals first due to the age of a couple of the people there, but Kamui got to watch The Wizard of Oz for the first time in way too long, and then they watched a recording of Showboat, and from there was when a couple of the younger kids started to get tired out. After the films, they played a couple of card games, but they quickly found out that it wasn't much fun to play when you already knew that despite all the odds, Camilla would win every single game.

Then came the mistake. Azura got monopoly out, and they got into four different teams of mixed ages. It was going to be a quick, fun game, probably only a couple of hours at most, but four hours later they were still going and Elise, having been woken up by laughter, was now laughing in a way that she probably hoped was evil as she observed the final few turns as the board fell, swiftly, to the mercy of her railway stations and lines of high price hotels. By this time, it was four in the morning, and the fun had only just begun.

Needless to say, when the first parent arrived to collect a child from Azura's at nine o'clock the next morning, the living room was a mess. Pillows were strewn everywhere, Elise and Sakura were sharing a blanket, Hinoka had lost one of her socks, Setsuna had locked herself in one of the bathrooms by accident and Hana was on the roof outside trying to force open the window to get her out, and Kamui was standing at the door, trying to work out how to explain to Effie's mother what on earth was going on and yes, yes, this was entirely normal, don't worry, no one has ever been killed, miss.


	8. Chapter 8

Officially, Ryoma was hosting the boy's sleepover, But clearly this didn't mean that Takumi was getting out of helping. In fact, Takumi was pulled into setting up from the moment school ended.

Ryoma was not the kind of person you said 'think small' to, though that would be evident from the moment you met him and wondered how much hairspray he used every morning. This was much the same when Takumi had hesitantly asked his older brother what he was planning to do for the sleepover.

"Oh, nothing much," Ryoma had said, and Takumi had immediately known that the next statement would be at odds with the first, "I was thinking that we could set up in the games room and do some stuff in there."

This 'stuff' had evolved into a full blown and organised games tournament, complete with a bunch of old party console games, a couple of handhelds dug out from a pile of old stuff no one but Takumi ever used anymore, two board games, a chess board, and scrabble. Takumi didn't know why Ryoma wanted to attempt to beat Odin at scrabble, but it wasn't going to happen. This was going to be an absolute disaster, he knew it, and they hadn't even worked out where everyone was going to sleep.

The obvious place for them to sleep, after they would presumably wreak the games room, was split between a few of the bedrooms, or maybe the dining room, or even the games room if everything went on so long that it would be impossible to get anyone out of the room without waking half the neighbourhood (and this wasn't exactly the sort of neighbourhood where houses were closer than an acre of land to each other, so Takumi did not make that statement lightly), but after Takumi had quietly admitted to his mother that last time there was a sleepover, Laslow had been pushed into the pond, she had forbidden them from existing near anything too breakable. This ruled out all of the guest bedrooms, which his mother liked to put fancy vases in, as well as the dining room with its various decorations, including the chandelier that he didn't imagine his father would be happy to see broken. This meant that they were designated an area of the garden to set up in, far, far away from the house. There was a tree house down there, but it was not big enough for the twenty or so people who would be attending tonight. Not that Takumi minded sleeping close to Leo, but he did mind sleeping close to someone scary like Xander or, heaven forbid, Saizo. Ryoma consistently told him that Saizo was nice and not really that scary, but Takumi didn't want to go anywhere near him, even if he was his brother's best friend.

This saw them setting up two eight person tents in the garden at half three that afternoon with only the two of them to do it. It was very, very difficult, and Takumi was despairing about what he would smell like in the big room full of all of them. His parents were great and he loved them, but making them sleep out in the garden was way too much. All getting Niles to walk four hundred metres in the dark guaranteed was that he would start feeling somebody up (Corrin, no doubt).

Despite all the odds, they got all the tents up and equipped with blankets as well as the treehouse before five o'clock, which meant that Takumi had just enough time to put some new clothes on so he could pretend he hadn't just spent an hour screaming at Ryoma that 'no, I don't go to the gym, I can't carry stuff this heavy like you can'.

Subaki was first to show up, equipped as usual with several bags of popcorn. Hinoka said that the girls all brought their own food and then ordered pizza, but it was their tradition to just order whichever takeaway was voted in (usually it was the pretentious sushi place, but his mother had said that if they wanted sushi she'd just make all of them a proper meal) and then they all each brought a bag of popcorn which they made a queue to heat up in the microwave. It was a strange tradition, but it worked.

Takumi lead Subaki through to the games room and told him to write down his 'gamer name' or whatever Ryoma wanted them to do. He didn't get this kind of thing.

"Takumi! Your boyfriend is here!" Ryoma called, and Takumi blushed fiercely, especially when Subaki, young and innocent as ever, asked him who his boyfriend was.

"I don't have a boyfriend," he muttered, leaving the poor boy to his confusion so he could beat his brother up. Maybe Leo would help him, and then they could get away from all the gaming stuff and go and read books or play chess together and then sleep in the same room without a bunch of people in there with them making kissing noises every two seconds because they thought they were funny.

Takumi stopped short at the door. Damn it, Leo just wasn't fair. He was too attractive, it just wasn't funny when he was trying to talk to him and his words got stuck in his throat or shot up into a soprano range. "Hi," he said, waving to the two at the door. Xander looked intimidating as usual, of course. He'd brought that one up with Leo a few times, and Leo told him to take one good look at Xander and judge if his hair, like Ryoma's, was sharp enough to use as a weapon (Leo had said implement of war, but it was what he meant).

"Hello," Leo said, and he smiled his stupidly blindingly white smile that was just completely unfair. "We brought some flowers for your mum to thank her for letting us stay." He handed Takumi the bunch of flowers and Takumi had to drag him and Xander away from Ryoma before the wolf whistles got too noticeable. Sometimes his brother was way too embarrassing to even be in the presence of.

"Thank you," he said, desperately looking around the room for somewhere to put the flowers. Where were all the vases? Where did you even put flowers? His mum was out buying food or something and he didn't know where to put them. "My dad's teaching at the moment and my mum's out, but I'll let them know later." Thinking quickly, he put them in the kitchen and then took Leo and Xander through to the games room. "You have to think of a code name or something. For games." Leo laughed, and Takumi felt a bit better. It wasn't too stupid then, nor too babyish for Leo. He'd been sort of worried about that.

He spent about fifteen minutes running people back and forth and explaining the silly name thing. There were some interesting names by the time they got started, such as 'birate', 'danxer' and Ryoma's own patented 'lobsteryoma'. Takumi had tried to go for something that wasn't too embarrassing, but he still had to explain to a few people what the yumi in takyumi meant.

Then the tournament began, and Takumi was pretty glad that he had a form of experience with all of these games, because he had not expected that Niles would ignore the rules of biology and be so good at aiming things despite a lack of depth perception, and he also hadn't ever thought that Laslow (ylisse3ever) was that good at dancing that he could beat literally everyone in Just Dance. Every single one of them. As predicted, Odin (thegreatandterribleodin) won every game of scrabble, and it turned out that Xander was oddly good at fighting games, and him and Ryoma played a fiery match that almost ended in a fist fight.

They took a break about halfway through to eat the food his mum had prepared for all of them, which was much, much better than getting takeaway again and everyone agreed (especially Leo, who was not much of a fan of sushi but preferred the soup even if he couldn't pronounce it). Then they moved on to the second half of the matches, including the very long chess tournament that involved Xander very obviously letting Subaki beat him when it was obvious he could have won in a couple more turns. There was also the dissolving of all the efforts to keep things appropriate for the younger kids like Arthur and Subaki after Niles' strategy to beat Corrin at chess was revealed to be 'stroke his inner leg and hope he gets distracted'.

It took forever and it was about two in the morning by the time they'd finished counting up all the scores (a surprisingly difficult task considering that half the people in the room could do long multiplication whilst half asleep) and it was revealed that, of all people, Leo and Takumi drew for the top spot. No wonder Leo had let that chess match go to a stalemate, the little shit. The very lovable little shit, but Takumi wasn't going to say that.

There was no prize, but that was probably because Takumi chased Niles out of the room after he suggested that the prize be a kiss from the top placing players. From there, they all stumbled their way down to the bottom of the garden to go to sleep.

No sleeping was done by pretty much anyone except Keaton, who could sleep through the apocalypse, and that was basically what happened, because when his mother came down the garden path in the morning to get them all in for breakfast, there were six people standing at the base of a tree while Hayato sat right at the top, stranded, and Kaden was trying to climb the tree to get him down. Laslow and Odin were both soaking wet for some reason that no one could determine, and Takumi and Leo were half a field away, sitting in a tree and playing chess together. Leo had beaten him three times in a row.


	9. Chapter 9

It was always a tradition for there to be a big get together between the Nohr and Hoshido families whenever Garon was out for some reason or another, especially if the most recent of his flings was going with him. This meant that they could see each other without risking the wrath of their father, and it was something that each one of them treasured when it came around. This time they were doing it regardless of the fact that they had only had a choir sleepover a few nights before.

"Do you want to come to us this time?" Xander asked. "Father is between girlfriends so we'll be the only ones there." He had said girlfriends, but Leo had said on many occasion that the only word for them was reverse prostitutes. He had sex with them, played around with them, sometimes married them, and then got lots of money from them in return. Their family weren't even poor. They'd never been poor.

"Sure, is Wednesday okay?" Ryoma asked. They'd tried, in the past, to split it between groups of siblings so two went to one house and two came back to theirs, but it didn't work and just created more cleaning up to do, though it had been fun when Mikoto had come to drop two children off and had just traded them for two others.

That Wednesday evening couldn't come quickly enough for Leo. He saw all of the Hoshidan family basically every day, especially Takumi, who he talked to via text after school and often before school, too, but there was something special about these times that they all came together. It was one of the few times he could be alone with Takumi without being judged for their friendship. He'd probably just be constantly teased about liking him in a romantic way instead, but at least he could talk to Takumi while that happened.

The four of them arrived, as usual, at four o'clock, each with a small bag with clothes and Ryoma was equipped with a bag full of food for them to share. With a final goodbye from their mum (and a reminder to Xander that if there was no cooked food in their house, she could always make them some), they were left alone in the mansion, or as alone as you could be with eight people there, anyway.

As usual, they split off into their separate groups, though they'd eat dinner together. Leo went up to his room with Takumi and after the very normal thirty seconds that they spent standing together awkwardly with nothing to do, Leo suggested that they play chess.

Chess was a normal thing for the two of them to do. When Leo had first met Takumi, it was at a concert that Ryoma was in, and Xander had introduced him to his friend's younger brother. Leo had started babbling about a recent obsession that he had developed with chess, and Takumi said that he had never played it. That was something the quite small Leo had decided was terrible, a tragedy even, and he'd been playing the game with Takumi ever since. They did it when they were bored or in hotel rooms or when one or both of them didn't really want to talk but they felt too awkward to just do nothing in the presence of the other. Leo always looked forward to playing chess with Takumi, because he felt that most of the time they were pretty evenly matched. Maybe he was a tiny bit better at it than Takumi, and he often had the upper hand, but at least Takumi was an interesting and challenging opponent. He wasn't like many people he knew who just gave up with chess once it got difficult.

Today, though, Takumi seemed more nervous than normal as they played. Leo could tell, because he wasn't playing as well as he did basically all the time. He was being sloppy, getting nervous when Leo started making more aggressive plays, and he didn't manage to put up much of a resistance once things started falling apart.

"You okay?" He asked. Sometimes Takumi wasn't up for doing loads of things, sometimes he didn't feel well, especially after a full day of school, and they were approaching the end of term. Leo wouldn't have been surprised if Takumi was exhausted and at the end of his tether with his nerves.

Takumi nodded. "Just thinking about how you're a smug little shit," he said with a grin. Leo smiled back. That was the Takumi he knew, and it was a relief. He understood that even Takumi's best friend was too much for him sometimes, but it was always sad when that time fell when they were planning to spend a bit of time together.

"Well, you're a pretty bad loser if you just insult me when you lose," Leo shot straight back at him. Takumi was one of the only people who could keep up with his wit, at least out of the people he talked to frequently and could freely insult without them being offended.

"It's a shame that I have to play chess with someone who blames his own ego on the loser," Takumi said, and he smiled an incredibly smug grin at Leo. Leo was suddenly hit with a thought of wanting to kiss it off him. Damn thoughts that meant almost nothing. They were just stupid impulses that caught him off guard.

"It's a shame that the only people I play chess with think that a pride in having a talent means I have a large ego." Takumi was being fair; in the past, his ego could have caused him to hit his head on a church ceiling, but he hoped that he was a bit better now.

"Can I kiss you?" Takumi asked, and Leo's jaw dropped. Takumi let out a bark of laughter. "It seems that I win," he said.

"Prick," Leo said, and he laughed too despite his disappointment. He was...he would say that he was curious about whether kissing Takumi would be nice or not. He had an intellectual interest in what it would be like, maybe.

"You didn't answer," Takumi said, and Leo felt his mouth dry up considerably. Did that mean that Takumi wanted to kiss him, or was this a test? This could be a friendship ending test if Takumi didn't want to kiss him. No matter what he'd read online when he was researching (for purely academic purposes that had nothing to do with having a crush on Takumi), he knew that asking to kiss a friend who didn't like you back would damage your friendship. "Or did the stick up your arse damage your vocal cords?"

Leo didn't say that the statement made no sense, though he probably should have jumped on any excuse to change the subject. "Go on, then."

And Takumi just leaned across the table and gently kissed him on the lips. It was quick, so quick that Leo could scarcely believe it had just happened. He might not have believed it, had Takumi not immediately sworn and pulled away, rubbing his ribs. "Ow..." He muttered. "The edges of the board are sharp."

Leo laughed nervously and stood up so he could go to the other side of the board to kiss Takumi back properly. He was so nervous. Did Takumi feel like he did? He hoped this wasn't going to utterly crash and burn, because he almost felt like it was going to. "Takumi, do you like me?"

"Leo," Takumi laughed nervously, "you're my best friend, of course I like you."

"No, do you like me in the way that you just kissed me." Leo cursed his inability to make this eloquent in any way. If they didn't completely destroy their friendship right now, this would be a stupid moment that Takumi could tease him for in years to come.

"Yes, I mean no, I'm sorry, I messed everything up, didn't I?" Takumi looked genuinely upset, and Leo had no idea about what to do except kiss him again.

He knocked noses with Takumi, and it was a moment that he was teased about for many, many years to come.


End file.
